VMware Inc interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 1

VMware Inc
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3 rounds | 4 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I started my career with very basic knowledge — just the fundamentals of coding and a lot of curiosity. In the beginning, I often felt overwhelmed seeing how much there was to learn, especially when I compared myself to others. But instead of letting that discourage me, I turned it into motivation to push myself harder every day.
Application story
Applied through referral. After that, an online assessment was conducted, and the shortlisted candidates proceeded to the interview rounds.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
In the second round of the interview, I made a mistake by mentioning the wrong time complexity and couldn’t complete the coding question fully. As a result, I wasn’t shortlisted for the next round.
Preparation
Duration: 4 months
Topics: DSA, Dynamic Programming, Pointers, OOPS, System Design
Tip
Tip

Tip 1: Practice as many questions as you can.
Tip 2: Complete at least two projects covering both frontend and backend.

Application process
Where: Referral
Eligibility: NA, (Salary package: 20 LPA)
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1: Don't lie on your resume. You should have complete practical knowledge of everything mentioned in it.
Tip 2: Use bullet points for each key detail.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration60 minutes
Interview date15 Apr 2025
Coding problem2

1. NINJA'S JUMP

Hard
15m average time
85% success
0/120
Asked in companies
Morgan StanleyAmazonExpedia Group

Ninja is assigned a task to reach the last stone by his master. These stones are numbered with some value and in the form of an array. He is allowed to jump either odd-numbered jumps or even-numbered jumps and has to reach the last stone.

So your task is to find the number of starting index from which he may start jumping so he reaches the last stones. You are provided with the given array and you have to find the number of starting index of the array from which Ninja can reach the end of the array by jumping some number of times.

For jumping you have to follow below instructions:

You may jump forward from index ‘i’ to index ‘j’ (with i < j) in the following way:

During odd-numbered jumps (i.e., jumps 1, 3, 5, ...), you jump to the index ‘j’ such that ‘arr[i] <= arr[j]’ and ‘arr[j]’ is the smallest possible value. If there are multiple such indices ‘j’, you can only jump to the smallest such index j.

During even-numbered jumps (i.e., jumps 2, 4, 6, ...), you jump to the index ‘j’ such that ‘arr[i] >= arr[j]’ and ‘arr[j]’ is the largest possible value. If there are multiple such indices ‘j’, you can only jump to the smallest such index ‘j’.

Problem approach

Step 1: Thought of naive simulation approach — too slow (O(n²)).
Step 2: Realized similar to odd-even jump problem; need next_higher and next_lower.
Step 3: Precompute next_higher and next_lower using sorting + monotonic stack (O(n log n)).
Step 4: Use DP to determine which indices can reach end.
Step 5: Count all starting indices where we can reach the end on odd jumps.
Step 6: Optimized solution impressed the interviewer.

Try solving now

2. Mail Rules

Easy
0/40
Asked in company
VMware Inc

Every valid email consists of a local name and a domain name, separated by the '@' sign. Besides lowercase letters, the email may contain one or more '.' or '+'.


If you add periods '.' between some characters in the local name part of an email address, mail sent there will be forwarded to the same address without dots in the local name. Note that this rule does not apply to domain names.


If you add a plus '+' in the local name, everything after the first plus sign will be ignored. This allows certain emails to be filtered. Note that this rule does not apply to domain names.


It is possible to use both of these rules at the same time.


Given an array of 'N' strings 'emails' where we send one email to each emails[i], return the number of different addresses that actually receive mails.


For Example :
Let 'emails' = ["test.email+alex@ninjas.com", "test.e.mail+bob.case@ninjas.com", "testemail@ninjas.com"].
We need to find the number of unique email addresses after applying the rules.

The first email "test.email+alex@ninjas.com":
The local name is "test.email+alex" and the domain name is "ninjas.com".
Applying the rules to the local name:
Remove '.' -> "testemail+alex"
Ignore everything after '+' -> "testemail"
The processed email address is "testemail@ninjas.com".

The second email "test.e.mail+bob.case@ninjas.com":
The local name is "test.e.mail+bob.case" and the domain name is "ninjas.com".
Applying the rules to the local name:
Remove '.' -> "testemail+bob.case"
Ignore everything after '+' -> "testemail"
The processed email address is "testemail@ninjas.com".

The third email "testemail@ninjas.com":
The local name is "testemail" and the domain name is "ninjas.com".
No '.' or '+' in the local name.
The processed email address is "testemail@ninjas.com".

The unique processed email addresses are {"testemail@ninjas.com"}.
Therefore, the number of different addresses that actually receive mails is 1.
Problem approach

Step 1: Split the email into local and domain parts using '@'.
Step 2: In local part, remove everything after '+' and all '.' characters.
Step 3: Combine cleaned local and domain parts back together.
Step 4: Store each normalized email in a set to ensure uniqueness.
Step 5: Return the number of unique emails (size of set).

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration60 minutes
Interview date28 May 2025
Coding problem1

1. Inplace rotate matrix 90 degree

Easy
12m average time
80% success
0/40
Asked in companies
OracleAppleFacebook

You are given a square matrix of non-negative integers of size 'N x N'. Your task is to rotate that array by 90 degrees in an anti-clockwise direction without using any extra space.

For example:

For given 2D array :

    [    [ 1,  2,  3 ],
         [ 4,  5,  6 ],
         [ 7,  8,  9 ]  ]

After 90 degree rotation in anti clockwise direction, it will become:

    [   [ 3,  6,  9 ],
        [ 2,  5,  8 ],
        [ 1,  4,  7 ]   ]
Problem approach

Step 1: Transpose the matrix (convert rows to columns).
Step 2: Reverse each column to achieve anti-clockwise rotation.
Step 3: Done in-place without using extra space.

Try solving now
03
Round
Hard
Face to Face
Duration60 minutes
Interview date29 May 2025
Coding problem1

1. Allocate Books

Hard
0/120
Asked in companies
ZSArcesiumAdobe

You are the Librarian of the Ninja library. There are ‘N’ books available in the library and ‘B’ ninjas want to read the books. You know the number of pages in each book and you have to allocate the books to the ‘B’ ninjas in such a way that the maximum number of pages allocated to a ninja is minimum.

Note

A book will be allocated to exactly one ninja. 
At least one book has to be allocated to a ninja.
Allotment of the books should be done in a contiguous manner. For example, a ninja can not be allocated book 2 and book 4, skipping book 3.

The task is to return the minimum of the maximum number of pages allocated to a ninja.

Problem approach

Step 1: Possible maximum pages per ninja range from max(book pages) to sum(all pages).
Step 2: Use binary search to find minimum feasible maximum.
Step 3: For each mid, simulate allocation — if possible with B ninjas, try smaller max.
Step 4: Finally, low will give minimum of the maximum pages.

Try solving now

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